Sink It

Our downstairs bathroom has a perfectly fine vanity, the typical run of the mill ones you can find at Home Depot or Lowes.   We are indifferent to it.   While standing at it a few weeks ago I had an epiphany.  Back in the fall around the same time we moved into our new house Nick's sister got a new house as well.  Their house had an original farmhouse double sink with porcelain legs from 1938.   Due to the renovations they needed to make to their house it no longer fit in their kitchen.   As I stood at my bathroom sink I realized that the farmhouse sink would fit perfectly there!  Luckily, Nick loved the idea and his sister let us take the sink.   Having such a big double sink will be great to have in that bathroom since it's off of the mud/laundry room, making it convenient for hand washing and soaking clothes.  

It was pretty dirty from years of grime and from sitting out side for a few months.  

First I used some dish soap knowing that it wouldn't be too abrasive,  it helped clean up a lot of the sink but couldn't get rid of some of the really deep and hardened dirt.   I searched online for a few different homemade cleaners that I could make up with what I had in the house.   I found one that used equal parts cream of tartar and lemon juice, making a paste.  It worked fantastic!  It cut through the dirt so well and helped the sink sparkle!  Definitely a solution I will be trying again!   Once it was cleaned I realized the corners and lines around the sink match our vintage porcelain tub in the downstairs bathroom.  It's like the two were meant to be together!

There are still a few rust spots that I'm going to try to patch since they aren't close to the drain.   We thought about re-glazing but the rest of the sink looks so great I'm not sure if its worth it.   Next up I have to finish cleaning the legs and get it prepped to install in the bathroom.

Paint By Numbers

After living in our house for a few months we decided it was time to adjust some of the paint colors.   Many of the colors the previous owners chose we loved however, the color of the living room we weren't as crazy about.   It wasn't offensive or anything just a bit too much pale yellow-y beige-y.  We are hoping to go for more of a blue/grey shade.   The room has beige carpet, maple colored trim and white baseboards,  in addition there is also a brick fireplace.  We needed to keep this all in mind when picking colors to make sure everything would tie together nicely

We stopped at Home Depot and picked up 8 samples.   Right away we could eliminate 3 or 4 of them.   Color #1, 3 and 7 we our favorites so we took the night to think about it.  If you are wondering were color #4 is, we tested it on a different wall and didn't like it.  The color was such a light gray I couldn't really photograph it well.

We finally settled on "school house slate" from the Martha Stewart line (paint color #1).   It wasn't too blue or too gray.   It took us about 5 hours to paint the two coats, which actually seems fast for a 20x30 ft. room.   Nick hates cutting/trim and I'm not crazy about rolling so we making a pretty mean painting team!

Before:

After:

The new slate blue-gray helps make the room seem smaller, which normally wouldn't be what one would go for but it's really a massive room.   The color makes it feel more cozy and home-like.

Our hope is to add white crown molding at some point to coordinate with the white baseboards, not sure if I want to paint the window molding white yet.  We also still need to address the stairwell upstairs.  The walls and ceiling are quite high and we weren't sure if we wants to have the new color go all the way up the stairs and hall or do something different.

If you can't buy it, build it

Happy New Year!  Here's to 2014!

Our new house is almost double the size of our last house.  Double the size means double the amount of furniture needed.   Moving in itself is costly, so there wasn't much left in our budget for furniture.  We did purchase a new couch, bed and mattress, but that was it.   Nick thought this might be a good opportunity to build our own furniture and save some money.  He had taken a few woodshop classes in high school and he really liked it however, he hadn't built anything in years.    In searching for easy to follow plans, he found Ana White's website.   It's fantastic, with so many options and its fun to see how others, who followed the plans, projects came out .    So far he has built a coffee table and dining room table and plans to try out more.

His first project was a coffee table for our living room.   Here it is unfinished before we stained and painted it.

We saw some where (not sure if it was a magazine or blog) a driftwood color stain and instantly loved it.   We decided to spray paint the legs cream for a two tone look.   The table is the perfect size for the space.

Our next project was building a dining room table.   When we have family over, it can be up to 10 people, so we knew we wanted a table large enough to seat everyone.   The dining room is luckily a long room so we had a good amount of space to work with.

We chose a walnut color stain that would stand out from the blonde maple colored floors.  I just love how its rustic feel pops against the formalness of the room.

It was so nice to have in place before the holidays.  We are using chairs currently, from the kitchen table but soon will have two 8ft. church pew benches on either side.   Can't wait to have those in place.

Kitchen - Before and After

Our kitchen is now 99% done and it looks amazing!   It is so much brighter and has the farmhouse look we were going for.   I can't believe we waited so long to make the updates.   In total we re-did the entire kitchen for about $250 (paint, tile and a new range hood).  The cabinet color is Ashes by Behr and the grout is Delorean Gray (I pretty much picked it out because it was called "Delorean").  I love the new kitchen so much and can't wait to start cooking in there more.

Before:  You can see the old wood molding around the cabinets as well as the lovely blue backsplash.  What makes the old backsplash even better was it was black tiles that were painted blue with painted on "grout" lines, ugh!  You can see we also briefly thought of a tin panel backsplash a few years ago and never took it down.  Yup, so this is what we lived with for the last four years!

 In progress: 

 After:

We just have a few minor touch ups left to do.  We need to re-paint the window frame and add a new piece of molding underneath it.   My husband also wants to make a mason jar light fixture for the center of the kitchen ceiling and we want to find a new rug.   

Dining Room Update

Wow, I can't believe it has been so many months since my last post!  In the fall I was so busy with work there wasn't a lot of time for antiquing, thrifting or blogging for that matter.  I can't wait for spring to come so I can get back out there again.  

In the meantime we did end up getting a wool braided rug from LLBean for Christmas from my parents.   While I originally wanted to get a blue/green/yellow one, my husband thought it would be too "matchy matchy".   We ended up going one with red, greens and touches of yellow and blues.  It helps add some other colors into the room.  We love it so much we are saving up to buy another braided rug for our living room.

Here is the whole dining room put together with the chairs we painted and upholstered ourselves, the Brimfield table (with one leaf in) and our vintage hutch.  

Last Two Chairs

We finally found 2 more chairs for our new dining room table about a month ago.  My husband found them on the side of the road for free on his ride home from work.   Although they do not match the style of the other 4 chairs they are a similar size.  We also liked how they were a bit more modern to off set the ornate style of the other 4 chairs.

We knew we didn't want to paint them blue like the others.  We thought about yellow however I thought I was starting to copy the Country Living cover a bit too much!  Instead we went with an almost hunter green color (its darker shade than it looks in the pictures.  We are upholstering the seats in the same striped fabric as the blue chairs.  Pictures of the whole table set up with the chairs will be coming soon.

On another note... our garage is starting to look a bit scary with all our projects we have going, eek!  Definitely need to tackle that before fall!

Dining Room chairs - Before and After

Now that we have the four chairs spray painted for our new dining room table, we have been looking for fabric to reupholster the seats with.   The chairs originally had a stained and worn beige and what I would call "dusty" rose color floral pattern fabric, definitely not pretty.

We narrowed down to our three favorites (all from JoAnn Fabrics):


Waverly Carino / Buttercup - Definitely one of my favorites.  It also comes in blue which would work well with two yellow end chairs.  However it might be a bit too much of a mustard yellow. 

Waverly Porch Swinger / Chambray - The stripe is classic,  love how it's called Porch Swinger.  The blue matches almost perfectly to the chair.

Waverly Language Of The Garden Ballroom Plaid - I really like the plaid but the blues look a bit off and it might be slightly a too country kitsch for my taste.

We ended up going with a pattern very similar to Waverly's Porch Swinger and we love it. 

We spent yesterday upholstering two of the four chairs (one of the wooden seats is cracked so we need the 3rd chair as a sample to trace a new seat seat).   I have never upholstered anything in my life so it definitely was an newbies's attempt.  Not perfect but I think overall a vast improvement to how the chairs looked before.   The fabric was exactly what we were looking for and just so happens to almost match the fabric on the Country Living cover that was my inspiration!

Four Chairs Down... Two More to Go.

Ever since we found the white distressed dining room table at Brimfield we have been on the hunt for chairs.   A few weeks ago as my husband was returning from a day of fishing in Newburyport when he spotted 4 vintage chairs at a yard sale.  The chairs were exactly what we were looking for.   They were not too ornate or to large (we have a very small dining room).   The best part was the claw and ball front legs!

I had just received my June issue of Country Living and the cover image became our inspiration.   We wanted to bring some color into the room so we decided to go with a slate blue similar to the one on the cover.   We still need to find two end chairs, which we plan on spray painting yellow.    I have also been looking at fabric to reupholster.    

via Country Living

The table we purchased at Brimfield.